The below is from a dissertation in process.It is copyright Geoffrey Barto,
2000-2002

Discussions of Hugo’s politics often highlight – as we have
noted – his move from the right to the left.But as Graham Robb warns, given the extent to which parental influence
shaped Hugo’s stated political outlook early in life, it is necessary to avoid
“interpretations which impose a grid of simplistic antitheses on Hugo and all
his work” (47).If Hugo was a socialist,
it was only in an etymological sense:he
sought to address the “social problem” of poverty, suffering, etc., not to
engage in class warfare, which he deemed ruinous to all (Politique171).

Hugo’s approach to the problems of the working class mirror
his at least partial indifference to governmental form – he favored systems and
politics alike for their results, not their theory.We have already highlighted Hugo’s elitism
where governance was concerned – he favored aristocracy in its etymological
sense (government by the best), and viewed republicanism and democracy not as
worthy in and of themselves but as ultimate goals because their success – even
viability – relied upon spreading the light of knowledge and reason among the
general populace.In other words, Hugo
didn’t believe the people were automatically worthy of self-rule – he felt it
should be the aim of society to form a populace that was, making republicanism
a far-off utopia to be brought about by social evolution, not simply a form of
government to be implemented by revolutionary force.In the next two chapters, we will see that
Hugo approached questions of property and wealth and the position of workers in
society in a similar vein:if Hugo
believed that all should be afforded dignity and respect and minimal standards
of living, the means of achieving this would again have to be through societal
advancement, not political force.Citizens were not automatically to be afforded dignity – or even a
living wage.To the contrary, the
economy and society were to be restructured such that all would be able to gain
access to property while workers could earn – as distinct from merely
collecting – a living wage, and be given the opportunity to distinguish
themselves – as opposed to merely being declared worthy at the outset.

This chapter takes as its starting point speeches given at
the Chambre de pairs in 1846 on the need for expanded
patent rights; the next chapter will consider Hugo’s much more famous speech in
the AssembléeNationale on
the need to rework the Ateliers Nationaux.In both cases, Hugo saw the value of labor and
the value of human dignity, but in both cases he recognized that dignity as a
product not of existence but of action.

* * *

In Graham Robb’s biography lurk questions about Hugo as a
monarchist, given the extent to which family squabbles dictated his earliest
political views.Robb tells us that in
Hugo’s first poems in favor of the monarchy “The need to adopt a clear vision
is obvious, but also the attempt to convince himself
that his monarchist mother had been right all along and that the confusion was
over” (46).If Hugo’s monarchist
tendencies were rooted in his allegiance to his mother, his socialism is
equally in question, for it does not adhere to our use of the word today.Rather, it corresponds to a phase in his
narrative of redemption – only for society rather than individuals – which is
at least partially divorced from politics and which precludes the easy top-down
solutions associated with the authoritarian state needed to enforce a
functioning and efficient (if not effective) socialist government.

* * *

To understand Hugo vis-à-vis property, we begin with
economics and assumptions about economics.However, we learn about Hugo’s economic views less from concrete
economics treatise than from the approaches he took to economic questions, both
in his pursuit of political agendas and in his literature.In so doing, it helps to remember that
economics is, in its etymological sense, the organization of the
household:we are interested not in
abstruse formulae or charts and graphs, but in the ways in which society
creates and acquires resources and the ways in which they are put to use to
better our lot.Economics, like
politics, is a means of ordering society.And the ways in which politicians and public people conceive of this
order reveals concretely their understanding of how the world actually works,
i.e. their ideology.In the present
exploration, we shall consider Hugo’s understanding of
value, and its creation.The question is
essential, for communism, socialism and capitalism are all founded in an
understanding of how value is created and how it ought to be allocated.In reading Hugo alongside Marx, we shall see
the contrast between their conceptions of value and industry and the ways in
which this contrast separates Hugo from the socialist and the communist.

In 1846, Hugo took the floor at the Chambre
des pairs to endorse maintaining the strongest possible patent and trademark
rights.Hugo wondered why it was that
for his assembly of words in a book, he was granted special privileges and
protections when an artisan who had created, say, a China
pattern, also showing ingenuity and original insight, was left less protected:

Citing as well the creations of Michelangelo and Raphael,
Hugo worried that such treasures would not be created if they were not
protected, and thus asked that their protections remain in place as long as
possible, that they be granted la durée:

This view is distinctly un-socialist – Hugo did not ask that
individual creations be made universally available for the public good.He did not question the generosity or public
spirit of those who wished extra compensation for the time, effort and insight
they put into their creations. He did not see the agglomeration of workers as a
united force that mutually benefited by its combined labor.To the contrary, he asked that individuals be
compensated, just as he was, for their individual creations.

Commercial break. Text resumes in six lines.

With his support for patents and trademarks, Hugo was
sanctioning one aspect of entrepreneurialism, a quality apart from the three
factors of production enumerated by Marx and other socialists of the day.For Marx, these are materials, labor and, of
course, capital.Today we refer to the
first two as natural and human resources.Throughout Capital, Marx refers to examples of economic processes
to demonstrate his conception of economics and argue for the idea that the
worker is exploited; among these is the construction and sale of a coat.Marx argues that because one can sell a coat
for more than the cost of materials and machine maintenance plus the average
wage paid for each coat produced, the worker has been exploited:his labor added more value than he was
compensated for adding.Anticipating the
capitalist’s justifications, Marx proposes this argument:

‘Can the worker produce commodities out of nothing, merely
by using his arms and legs?Did I not
provide him with the materials through which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied?…’But has the worker not performed an
equivalent service in return, by changing his cotton and spindle into
yarn?(299)

Marx goes on to contemplate “surplus value,” the difference
between what a coat, pair of boots or ball of yarn costs to make and what it
sells for.In chapter after chapter,
Marx plays out the same argument, ending always with the notion that the
capitalist received more than he invested, without truly answering the
capitalist’s question:Did I not provide
the worker with means to create this value, and do I not deserve recompense for
so doing?In advocating patents, Hugo
didn’t necessarily speak for the capitalist, but he did speak for the idea of
surplus value.After all, royalties
could not be paid to an inventor unless the price charged exceeded the cost of
the raw materials, human labor and wear and tear on machines.And like the capitalist, the inventor does
not necessarily exert one ounce of labor on the actual finished good.

It is curious that Marx doesn’t assume that it is the
consumer who is exploited, being charged more than the true worth of the
coat.But even Marx seemed to understand
that in at least some markets, the value of an object was what one could sell
it for. Hence, Marx looked for the one
place where markets did not seem to have set the price and settled on
labor.What Marx missed, however, that
modern economists do not, is entrepreneurialism – the value added to a product
by the insight and ingenuity needed to plan, design, organize, direct or
envision a combination of land, labor and capital in a manner that adds up to
the most value.Just as good materials,
skilled workers and proper equipment are necessary for production, so is the
selection and design of products and their modes of distribution, et
cetera.Consider a profitable
bakeshop.Do its owners exploit because
they earn more on a loaf of bread than their overall expenses?Marx would say yes.But the modern economist generally recognizes
that that the added value in our loaf of bread derives from the fact that the
gestalt of a loaf of bread is more valuable in a particular market than the sum
parts of labor, capital and materials needed for its creation, the added
measure being its existence as a loaf of bread and not those separate parts
waiting to be combined to form its essence.The person who adds this value is the entrepreneur whose labor is
thinking, planning and organizing.Simply put, when one goes to the baker’s, one does not desire to take
home a sack of flour, an oven and a worker; one simply wants the loaf of
bread.The people who have the idea to
make and sell the loaf of bread – the person who risks capital in investing,
the person who finds a better way to make the bread, the person who develops a
particularly pleasing combination of flours - are compensated for their
entrepreneurialism – their ideas – with the profits.The last two of these fall under the rubric
of patents and trademarks.Similarly, if
a person is willing to pay more for a plate with a pretty flower pattern on it,
the idea of the flower design – and not merely the price of the paint – is a
part of the value of the plate.Hugo’s
support for compensating those who came up with these ideas indicates a belief
in industry and innovation as worthy things from which their creators should
profit – not products that should be given over to the whole of the public for
the common good they might foster, or over to the workers for their efforts in
replicating others’ ideas.In fact, it
is Jean Valjean’s innovation that enables him to
become M. Madeleine, a respectable and upstanding citizen.A classic socialist might argue that Jean Valjean would not have suffered all he suffered in a
socialist world and would not have needed to gain by his innovation, but the
self-proclaimed socialist, Victor Hugo, saw the opportunity to gain by
innovation as important for Valjean’s redemption and
necessary for according to workers the fullest measure of dignity they had
earned.In effect, Hugo’s 1847 speech
has behind it an ideal that relies on social policy not to uplift workers but
to allow them to uplift themselves, accruing dignity and respect to themselves
for the insight and ingenuity they brought to their labors.

While Hugo seeks compensation for the worker for ingenuity,
he stands resolutely against the apportionment of money and respect by
political fiat, on the assumption that all are worthy and seeks a more abstract
and longer-term project for social betterment than, for example, the government
workshops of 1848, which are considered in the next chapter.The longer-term nature of Hugo’s project is
both explicitly told and reflected in the events of Les Misérables.Profiting by ingenuity not only marked one of
several steps in the redemption of the outcast Valjean,
but its effect flowed outward, first giving him the wealth to survive, but then
also the position to rescue Fantine, a fellow
outcast, and to take care of Cosette.When Valjean meets
the Thénardier, it is in offering charity, and while
the plot line that follows is divorced from the subject of charitable giving,
one is left to at least momentarily think of those genuinely suffering that Valjean might have helped.In raising himself up, Valjean found the means
to do the same for others.In pushing
for patent rights, Hugo was making the as yet unwritten Les Misérables possible, opening up new avenues for the
Jean Valjeans of the future to make their own paths
toward prosperity and personal betterment.And yet the supposedly socialist Victor Hugo effected this not by direct
governmental action – certainly contemplated and debated by the time Les Misérableswas finished; the possibility can’t simply
be dismissed as unthinkinkable – but by the indirect
route of opening up a world in which the low could raise themselves higher (the
verb is active, individual, not passive) if only their efforts were properly
recognized and honored.Moving from the
individual to the abstract, we find in Les Misérables
a digression in which Hugo succinctly explains the flaw in socialism:

Earlier, Hugo indicates the central problem faced by
socialism:equal and equitable distribution are not the same thing (406).

Hugo’s support for patent rights is particularly interesting
because his focus was initially on maximizing the duration of patents.Generally, discussions of patents focus on
how one can minimize their duration while ensuring that it remains in an
inventor’s interest to record rather than obscure the functioning of his or her
technology.Patents in the United
States, for example, are limited to 20 years.Their reason is not to protect innovators but to guarantee them sufficient
monopoly power in the short run by which they can profit that they won’t hide,
disguise or mask their innovations, such that the inventions are lost when the
creator dies:

All intellectual property laws in the United States are
based on Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which allows Congress to
pass laws "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing
for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries."

Simply stated, the constitutional purpose of intellectual
property is NOT to make anyone rich, but to promote the growth of science and
industry. Right there in black and sort-of-yellowish-brown, the constitution
states its intention of promoting progress, which benefits consumers, in a way
that incidentally benefits producers as well (Landley).

That is to say, the genesis of patent law is in its own way
a socialist enterprise, an estate tax on intellectual property whose
blandishment go only far enough to discourage the hiding or dilution of said
estate.Hugo, however, was as concerned
about protecting an artist’s rights as he was entering new ideas into the
public record.While he appealed to the
need to ensure that great works of industry, if not art, would continue (336),
asking that older legislation be allowed to stand with longer-term protections
in lieu of a new law being passed that would shorten the life of the marque de fabrique
to 15 years (n. on 335).

* * *

The
observations above have as their focus Hugo’s thoughts on the patent and its
implications for the perception of the idea of private property and the
like.In the following chapter, Hugo’s
attitude vis-à-vis the worker will be considered, particularly in light of an
address to the AssembléeNationale
in 1847.However, before passing on to
property, it is necessary to consider a text in which Hugo spoke more directly
to the idea of property.The text in
question is a chapter entitled “L’Avenir,” the
opening chapter of Paris.In this
text, Hugo lays out a vision of the world to come, foreseeing all manner of
progress.Among the greatest indications
of progress that Hugo highlights is the spread of private property.In thus directing his focus, Hugo is plainly
following in the footsteps of Locke and Jefferson with a conception of liberty that
is again centered on the individual and on the liberation of society one person
at a time.As we will see in the
following chapter, Hugo rejects the idea of liberating the poor by robbing the
rich.In “L’Avenir,”
Hugo makes a rather bold statement about the evolution of the world toward a
better age (incidentally, in forecasting an entity not unlike the European
Union as well as the formation of the global village):

The expression of this thought is important for two reasons,
first because it comes in 1867, showing a 20-year span in which property and
the liberal understanding of economics persist, and second because it follows
what Hugo was suggesting about the evolution of democracy in the political
arena in 1830 – that like the right to vote, the ownership of property would
grow and be democratized, in time allowing everyone their place in
society.Far from the Marxist conception
of universal ownership assuring everyone equal rights, Hugo sees individual
ownership as one of the keys to allowing us to move beyond the nation state and
more parochial interests to claim our place in humanity.In this, his thoughts more closely mirror
Ford Motor’s profit-sharing program than any of the societies spawned by the
ideologies associated with the socialists of an earlier day.